Sugar Mountain

Adam works on valentines for his class since he won't be back to school until Valentine's Day

Packed and ready to roll

Chillin in the back seat

Sugar Mountain trail map - our condo was along the "Lower Flying Mile" trail on the left

View from our condo - the slopes are across the street

Photo op before heading down the slopes for the first time

Helen and Adam coming off the "magic carpet" on the training hill

Helen and Derek following behind me and Adam on the chair lift

Typical congestion on the one little hill on the "Easy Street" green slope. The beginners freak out because the trail goes over a hill and narrows at the same time. They fall or, my personal favorite, just sit down which has a ripple effect on those that follow.

Ready for a cold and windy day of skiing on Sunday

Derek relaxes in the condo

We played lots of card games

Adam gets some ice for his drink

The kids really love to night ski - us not so much

Adam's ready to fly

Helen and the boys check out the inner tubes at the Tubing Park

Helen took this action shot as we all headed down attached to each other

At the bottom of the run

Riding the magic carpet back to the top

We went skiing in Sugar Mountain North Carolina last weekend. We left on Friday and returned Wednesday. It was a whirlwind getting everything ready. Since Helen's a teacher it's hard for her to take time off during the school year. She gets 3 personal days each year and the past few years she's taken them all at once so we can carve out a family ski trip. It's stressful for her to take the time off, but she says she's willing to do it for her family. It's an unexcused absence for the kids, but it doesn't really matter right now in elementary school. Hopefully, we'll be able to work with their teachers as they get older.

I took the day off on Friday so that everything would be ready to go when Helen came home. I was tempted to just take half a day off, but I was glad that I took the whole day...I needed it. Even though we had packed quite a bit of stuff beforehand, it still took me the whole time to get everything into the van and ready to go. It's always unbelievable how much time it takes.

I checked the boys out of school a little early. They were so excited. Helen was supposed to be home by 3:00, but had to stay late to make sure that she had all her plans in order for the substitute teacher. I used that time to enlist the boys to help me sweep, vacuum, and mop - but they weren't happy about it and responded with, "But we usually get to watch tv." It's an ongoing discussion between me and Helen about the amount of "down" time they all take when they come home from school.

Helen finally got home and we finally got on the road a little before 5:00, which put us in some pretty heavy traffic. Who do I blame? Once again I can't believe how far out people live. Traffic was congested for a long long way.

Derek and Adam liked chilling in the backseat, watching movies, and eating snacks. They watched "The Princess Bride" and "Spy Kids". We love "The Princess Bride" and were glad to see that the kids really enjoyed it. All the snacks didn't sit well with Derek and he puked in the parking lot of Wendy's when we got out for dinner. Thankfully, he seemed to feel better immediately and ate plenty for dinner.

The drive is pretty easy - up I-85 to 221 just outside of Spartanburg, South Carolina. We got to Sugar Mountain about 10:30 and rented our ski equipment. Last year we waited until Saturday and it was really crowded.

Our condo was a little strange. It was a circular design where the den was sunken from the rest of the condo. You went up a few stairs to the kitchen to a very small bedroom for the boys then through a bathroom to our bedroom and back out to a landing with another bathroom and then down some more stairs to the den again. Our bathroom had been remodeled and not well. There was an oversized tub with no shower -we never used the tub. The tub was so big that you had to sit sideways on the toilet. We really liked the condo from last year, but I wanted to try something new. Who does Helen blame? We ended up getting used to everything and liked that it was an easier walk to the slopes, so it all worked out.

It was nice that we already had our equipment and could just walk across the street to the slopes on Saturday. It still took us longer to get going than Derek would have liked. But he only asked us about 20 times when we were going to go skiing.

The boys were a little apprehensive, but got their legs under them pretty quickly. Last year it was such a mad house on Saturday that we didn't even bother until the night session. It wasn't hopeless this year, but it probably would have been best to skip the day session and the crowds.

We were tired, but the kids really wanted to do night skiing. We were glad that we did. The crowds were down, but there was still a festive energetic feel. The rest of the week it didn't feel as festive during the night skiing sessions, but we were surprised that there were still plenty of people and the place didn't feel dead.

On Saturday night everything was going great and everyone had just navigated a tricky trail in order to cross over to the lift we needed to take to get home. We were taking the hill down to our condo and I was leading when Adam just took off. I was following and looked on as he totally took this woman out. She was wearing a yellow coat like the ski instructors, so she may have been giving a snowboard lesson...I'm not sure. I just found her on her back with her eyes closed and Adam about 10 yards below her looking back up at me. It took her a little bit, but she finally said she was fine and told me to go on. I think she was more irritated than anything - justifiably. I made sure that Adam was fine and then I lit into him with a long tirade about skiing under control. It seemed that Adam was able to control his skiing, but I felt guilty because the bottom line is that I'm responsible for him and allowed him to do it.

Sunday was very cold and blustery. We read on the daily weather report later that it was the windiest day in many years. Helen was sure the lifts would be closed, but they were open for business. We bundled up and it wasn't too bad except when I took everybody to the top of the mountain on the "Big Red" lift which was older and more rickety. Helen said she cursed a few times on the ride up as she and Derek swayed from side to side. I told her to treat it like turbulence on air plane...you don't fight it...you just bounce along and go with the flow.

We went tubing Monday morning and had a great time. Adam said it was his favorite part. We liked that they allow you to chain together and ride down, but they still tried to stifle some of the fun by constantly telling you to slow down way before you really needed to.

There's a new ice skating rink and we checked it out after tubing. Derek was afraid that it meant we had to figure skate. We told him that hockey players ice skate, but he was skeptical. The ice ended up being pretty rough (I didn't see a Zamboni anywhere), so we decided to skip the ice skating.

By Monday, the boys were really skiing well. Helen was doing good at her own pace, but as the boys got faster we had to wait longer and longer for Helen. I got frustrated because the boys were improving, but she had settled at a level (a low level) and wasn't attempting to get any better. I told her that the boys were getting better and better and the trend wasn't looking good if she wanted to ski with us in the future. She reluctantly tried to get out of her comfort zone. I told her that if she wasn't falling then she wasn't trying. She made some small improvements and, at least, attempted to get out of the "pizza" position. She complained that her left foot was like a dead fish and would not respond to her brain signals.

Adam is still skiing in the pizza\french fry style, but mostly french fry - so he really moves. Derek is skiing with his skiis closer together in the correct position. I think he's even doing better than I am about getting his weight over his skiis instead of leaning back. The boys and I even did some small jumps - pretty lame jumps, but we tried. Adam even navigated the big ramps at the Terrain Park. Derek didn't bother. I tried and fell when I leaned back after realizing the back side of the ramp had a chunk missing. Adam must have jumped the missing chunk.

On Tuesday, the weather was warmer and foggy and the slopes were a little mushy, especially the lower slopes. Adam volunteered to coach Mommy and help her go faster. We spent a lot of time on "Easy Street" for Helen, but eventually made a couple trips to the top. Helen was a little scared when she couldn't see me and Adam through the fog.

We ate all our meals in the condo (cereal, eggs, sandwiches, sloppy joe's, hamburgers, fajita's, and spaghetti). We played lots of card games. The boys especially liked Uno. This was their first time playing it. We also played a number of games of Stratego. Helen was initially sad that I had not rented any movies. I had planned on it, but ran out of time. We found out once again that skiing is time consuming and exhausting and there's not a whole lot of waking down time. Last year, we got out and explored the surrounding area a little. We went North and checked out Ski Beech (it didn't look too good to us), but this year we just stayed in Sugar Mountain.

We all got a little better. The snow wasn't great, but did the job. Last year there was noticeably more snow and less ice. The wind on Sunday didn't help. They were making snow, but the wind was blowing it off the slopes and exposing the ice underneath, especially on the steeper parts. They say if you can ski on the ice in North Carolina then you'll be fine out West.

We went to Keystone, Colorado a few years ago for the boy's first ski trip. We had never skiied in North Carolina and didn't want their first experience to be a bad one. We fell back to North Carolina last year because we were also doing a big Disney trip later that year and thought we could save some money and check out North Carolina at the same time.

After last year's trip, we thought there were a lot of positives about North Carolina: cheaper, less travel hassle, and easier skiing. Helen also felt more comfortable with the scale of Sugar Mountain compared to the resorts out West. She felt more intimidated out West. The downsides were that Sugar Mountain doesn't make it as easy as it could be. Out West, you can order multiday lift tickets on the internet or in person. On Sugar Mountain, you have to get lift tickets in person each day. Last year Adam was young enough for free lift tickets, but he had to walk upstairs in all his ski stuff to the admin office so they could personally attach his lift ticket...what a pain. Generally, the whole feel of Sugar Mountain is not like a world class vacation destination like the ski resorts out West or Disney World. Hopefully, next year we'll be heading out West again.